‘My lord,’ she gasped.

In the light from the sconce his face was all hard angles and smooth planes. There was a loneliness about him. She was sure of it this time. An impossible bleakness as he stared into her eyes. His lids lowered a fraction, and his mouth softened and curved in a most decadent smile when she nervously licked her lips.

A flash of hunger flared in those storm-grey eyes.

An answering desire roared through her veins. Shocked, heart pounding, she stared into his lovely face, waiting, wondering.

Slowly he bent his head, as if daring her to meet him halfway. Unable to resist the challenge, she closed the distance and brushed her mouth against his. His hand came behind her nape and expertly steadied her as he angled his head and took her lips in a ravenous kiss.

On a soft groan he broke away. His chest was rising and falling as rapidly as her own. His gaze was molten.

‘Would it really be so bad to be married to me, Miss Wilding?’ he asked in a low, seductive growl.

About the Author

ANN LETHBRIDGE has been reading Regency novels for as long as she can remember. She always imagined herself as Lizzie Bennet, or one of Georgette Heyer’s heroines, and would often recreate the stories in her head with different outcomes or scenes. When she sat down to write her own novel it was no wonder that she returned to her first love: the Regency.

Ann grew up roaming Britain with her military father. Her family lived in many towns and villages across the country, from the Outer Hebrides to Hampshire. She spent memorable family holidays in the West Country and in Dover, where her father was born. She now lives in Canada, with her husband, two beautiful daughters, and a Maltese terrier named Teaser, who spends his days on a chair beside the computer, making sure she doesn’t slack off.

Ann visits Britain every year, to undertake research and also to visit family members who are very understanding about her need to poke around old buildings and visit every antiquity within a hundred miles. If you would like to know more about Ann and her research, or to contact her, visit her website at www.annlethbridge.com. She loves to hear from readers.

AUTHOR NOTE

I have always loved the spooky Gothic novel and mysterious old houses. Clearly the secrets in Bane’s and Mary’s pasts made them the perfect couple to spend time in a house haunted by a ghost and riddled with passages behind its walls. But how, I wondered, did my Earl make his money? Then I made a discovery.

Tin-mining has a long and ancient history in Cornwall, and was at its height of profitability during the Regency. It was quite a thrill to visit a tin-mine, where I was able to go underground and see and hear what those miners of old would have seen and heard. I learned a lot more about tin-mining than would ever fit within my story, and if you are as intrigued as I was you can learn more about it on my blog: http://www.regencyramble.blogspot.com as well as finding out about the other places I have visited.

If you want to know more about forthcoming books visit www.annlethbridge.com or write to me at ann@annlethbridge.com. I love to hear from my readers.

Bane Beresford
Ann Lethbridge

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This book is dedicated to Keith, Rosalie, Ken, Lin, Bill, Di and Brian, my wonderful family, who help me with my research trips in Britain. Their patience while I explore ruined castles, peer into corners in old houses for hours, and even visit a tin-mine found down a winding narrow road in Cornwall, is truly amazing. They make my research fun.

It is also dedicated to my wonderful editor,

Joanne Grant, who let me try something different

with this book and made sure I stayed on track.

Contents

Cover

Excerpt

About the Author

AUTHOR NOTE

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Epilogue

Copyright

Chapter One

The wind keened outside the ancient walls of Beresford Abbey. Bane, following on the heels of the ancient butler along the stone passageway, noticed that only one sconce in five had been lit. Blown out by draughts? Or a sign of his welcome? No matter which, the gloom suited his mood.

‘You should have left the dog in the stables,’ the butler muttered over his shoulder.

Bane glance down at Ranger, part-lurcher, part-wolfhound, pressed to his left side. ‘The dog stays with me.’

The butler tutted. ‘And how shall I announce you, sir?’ He gestured to the open door a few feet along the gloomy corridor.

A wry smile twisted Bane’s lips. Was there a protocol to be followed? If so, he didn’t know it. ‘I’ll announce myself.’

Looking shocked, but also relieved, the doddering old man turned back, shuffling down the dim stone corridor shaking his head. A wise old bird for whom discretion was the better part of valour.

Bane approached the doorway on feet silenced by carpet. He paused at the entrance to the cavernous chamber. The flickering light from ten-foot-high torchères on each side of the heavily carved four-poster bed fell on the features of the shrunken man propped up by pillows. A face lined by dissipation and framed by thin strands of yellowing grey hair straggling out from beneath a blue silken nightcap. Bony shoulders hunched in silk valuable enough to feed a family of four for a year shook with a spasm of coughing.

A dead man breathing his last. Finally. The chill inside Bane spread outwards as he took in the others clustered at the edge of the circle of light. Two women, three men, some of whom he recognised as family. He’d investigated all of his relatives to avoid unnecessary surprises.

The older woman was his aunt, his grandfather’s daughter, Mrs Hampton, returned home as a widow. Her gown was the first stare of fashion as befitted her station. Tight curls of grey hair beneath a lace cap framed a middle-aged but still arresting face. As a young woman she’d been lovely, according to his mother, and too proud to make a friend of a lass from Yorkshire. At her side stood her son, Gerald, an almost too-pretty lad of seventeen with a petulant mouth and vivid blue eyes. The other young man was a distant fourth cousin. A Beresford through and through, slight, dapper, with blond hair and light blue eyes and a man his grandfather would have been happy to see as his heir had Bane not stood in the way.

An aspiring tulip of fashion in his early twenties, Bane had seen Jeffrey Beresford in town. They had no friends in common, but they bowed in passing—an acknowledgement of mutual distrust.

The other woman he did not know. Young, with a willowy figure, standing a good head taller than Mrs Hampton, she had inches on both young men. A Beresford also? She had the blonde hair and blue eyes to match the name, though she was dressed simply, in some dark stuff bespeaking modesty rather than style. The desire to see that statuesque body in something more revealing caused his throat to close.

Surprised him.

As a boy he’d had lusty thoughts about anything in skirts. As a man, a businessman, he had more important things on his mind. Women like her wanted home and hearth and a man to protect them. His life was about taking risks. Gambling all, on the chance for profit. No woman should live with such uncertainty. They were too delicate, too easily broken as his mother had been broken. The pain of her death had been unbearable. Not something he ever intended to experience again. Nor was it necessary. He was quite content to avoid the respectable ones while enjoying those who only wanted money in exchange for their favours, the demi-monde.

So why couldn’t he keep his eyes from this most respectable-looking of females? Who was she? He wasn’t aware of a female cousin, close or distant. Not that there couldn’t be a whole host of relatives he didn’t know about, since he didn’t give a damn about any of them. But as his gaze ran over the girl, a prickle of awareness raised the hairs on the back of his neck. A sensation of familiarity so strong, he felt the urge to draw closer and ask for her name.

Yet he was positive they had never met. Perhaps it was the wariness in her expression that had him intrigued.

A blinding flash of lightning beyond the mullioned windows lit the room in a ghostly light. An image seared on Bane’s vision. Stark otherworldly faces. Mouths dark pits in pale skin as the air moved with their startled gasps. They looked like the monsters who had peopled his childish nightmares. His enemies. The people who wanted him dead, according to his uncle. His mother’s brother.

In truth, he hadn’t expected to see family members here. He’d preferred to think of the old man alone and friendless as he gasped his last.

Just like Bane’s mother.

If not for this man, his mother might be alive today and the guilt of her death would not weigh so heavily on Bane’s shoulders. No matter how often he tried to put the blame where it belonged, on the man in the bed, he could not deny his own part in the events of that day. His thoughtless anger that had put her at risk. Hell, even his very existence, the reason she had run from this house in the first place.

Power and wealth brought invulnerability. His mother had drilled it into him since the day he could understand his place in the world. And that was why he was here. That and to see the old man off to the next world. He simply couldn’t pass up the chance to see the dismay in the old earl’s gaze.

He could count the number of times he and the old man had met face to face on one hand. But he had always been there, in the shadows, a threatening presence. Forcing his will where it was not wanted. Guiding Bane’s education, trying to choose his friends, but his mother’s brother had been more than a match for the earl. Bane still remembered his horror as he stood with his uncle on the doorstep of this house and listened to an argument over him, about money, about cruelty and murder. Accusations that had haunted him as a youth. Fed his anger at this man.

But his temper was not the hot flash of his youth, the kind that brought trouble to him and those around him. It was a cold burn in his gut, controlled, and carefully directed. Guilt over his mother’s death had taught him that lesson.

Since then, Bane had striven to be the gentleman his mother always wanted him to be. He had battled for the respect of the scions of other noble houses at school and held his head high. But at heart he was the son of a coalminer’s daughter. And proud of it. Mining was in his blood and showed in the scars on his knuckles and the muscles in his shoulders developed at the coalface.

He was more Walker than Beresford, whether or not he had any Beresford blood.

The lightning faded. Shadows once more reclaimed all but the man in the bed. As his coughing subsided, the earl’s gnarled fingers clawed at the bedsheets, then beckoned.

Resistance stiffened Bane’s spine. He wasn’t about to be called to heel like some slavering cur. But, no, apparently this particular summons was not for him. The old man must not have seen him yet, since it was the two women who moved towards the bed, Mrs Hampton nudging the younger one ahead of her, making her stumble.

Bane took a half-step, a warning on his lips, but the girl recovered inches from the earl’s warding hand, mumbling an apology.

Who was she? Some indigent relative looking for crumbs in the final hours? There would be no crumbs for any one of them. Not if Bane had a say.

‘So you are Mary.’ The old man’s voice sounded like a door creaking in the wind. ‘She said you were no great beauty, but not that you were a beanpole. You take after your father.’

‘You knew my father?’ the girl asked, and Bane sensed how keenly she awaited his answer. Her body seemed to vibrate with the depth of her interest.

The old man grimaced. ‘I met him once. Kneel, girl. I’m getting a crick in my neck.’

Like a supplicant, the girl sank down. Anger rose hot and hard in Bane’s throat on the girl’s behalf, but she seemed unperturbed by the command and gazed calmly into the dying man’s face.

She spoke again, but her low voice did not reach all the way to Bane in the shadows beside the door.

The old man glared at her, lifted a clawed hand to twist her chin this way and that. Glimpses of her profile showed strong classical features, a straight aristocratic nose. Lush, full lips. A narrow jaw ending in a decided chin. Not a classical beauty, but a face full of character.

The sight of the old man’s hands on her delicate skin caused Bane’s hands to fist at his sides, made him want to go to her rescue. An impulse he instantly crushed. A weak old man could do her no harm. And Bane had no interest in her, despite her allure.

She was not his type of woman.

Ranger growled, more a vibration under his hand than a sound. Bane glanced down at the dog and signalled him to settle. By the time he looked back, the old man had released his grip on the young woman. ‘No,’ the old man said, answering the question Bane had not heard. ‘My reasons are my own.’

The girl’s shoulders seemed to slump, as if she had hoped for a different response.

Bane remained still in the shadows, content to watch a little longer, content to choose his own moment to reveal his presence.

The old man peered into the shadows on the other side of the bed. ‘She’ll do,’ he said with a triumphant leer. His smile was a mirthless drawing back of lips over crooked yellow teeth.

The woman, Mary, jerked back. ‘I have given my thanks, my lord, I do not need your approval.’ Her words rang with defiance. Brave words, but the voice shook.

Bane ruthlessly quelled a tiny surge of pity. He had no room for pity or mercy.

Beresford wheezed a laugh. ‘Bold piece, ain’t you. No milk-and-water miss. All the better.’ He flicked his fingers in dismissal. The girl rose to her feet and turned.

Bane knew the moment she saw him. The widening of her eyes, the hesitation, the flare of recognition in her gaze, not recognition of him as a person, but of his presence. The connection between them was a tangible thing, a twisting invisible thread that kept their gazes locked. And he felt … something. A tightening of his body. The kind that heralded lust. Not something he wanted or needed right now.

He shook his head, a warning to remain silent, and it seemed she understood for she strode back to Mrs Hampton’s side as if she hadn’t seen him at all. An unwanted trickle of admiration for her quiet calm warmed his veins.

He dragged his gaze back to the man in the bed. It was time to be done with this farce. Bane forced himself not to square his shoulders or take a deep breath. He was no boy worried about his acceptance. He belonged here and he cared not a whit if they thought otherwise. He signalled Ranger to lie down, yet still he hesitated to take the first step.

The earl again looked over into the shadows on the far side of the bed. ‘You said he would come,’ he quavered.

A man trotted up to the bed. Tight lips. Eyes that darted hither and yon, never resting long enough to be read, bald pate shining. ‘He is expected, my lord. I sent word as you ordered.’ A dry, officious voice. A clerk of some sort. Solicitor, Bane decided.

‘The storm must have delayed him.’ The solicitor rubbed his palms together with a papery sound. ‘Perhaps tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow will be too late.’

A flash of lightning punctuated his words, the room once more a colourless tableau of frozen players.

Bane stepped into the lamplight in that moment. His shadow loomed black over the bed and up the wall behind the dying man like some portent of evil. ‘I am here.’

The old man’s gasp was eminently satisfying. No doubt he had carried the hope his elder grandson would miraculously die at the eleventh hour.

Thunder rolled beyond the window, drowning out the old man’s muttered words.

Bane’s lip curled. It no longer mattered what the old man said. Beresford Abbey was a few short breaths from being passed on to a man who likely had not a drop of Beresford blood.

Oh, the old man had tried to make the best of an heir he despised once he’d discovered Bane had survived to stake his claim. He’d tried to force the twelve-year-old Bane into the appropriate mould. The right sort of school, the right education. As much as his mother’s family would permit. And Bane had used what he needed to take back what was rightfully his. His mother had fled the Abbey because she feared for Bane’s life. She had lost her own, trying to keep him safe. The powerlessness he’d felt that day still haunted him. He’d fought. How he’d fought. And those men, they had laughed at him. Mocked him. After that day he had sworn he would never let anyone make him feel weak and helpless again. He never had. And never by the man lying in the bed.

He’d used the best of both his worlds. The strength of the coalminers he’d worked alongside in summer holidays and the power of the nobility given by the title he would inherit. He’d taken control of his life.

No one would ever manipulate him again. Not his mother’s brother, or the earl.

Bane glanced over at the watchers. If one of them, just one of these relatives, had taken pity on his mother, offered her their support, he might have been able to find a little mercy in his heart. But they hadn’t. He bared his teeth in a smile that would do Ranger proud.

The old earl looked him over, his red-rimmed, faded blue eyes watery, his face a picture of scorn. ‘So, the scavengers are circling.’

‘You sent for me, Grandfather,’ he said his tone mocking.

The earl’s gaze lingered on Bane’s face and he shook his head. ‘A curse on your mother for sending my son to an early grave.’

Bitterness roiled in his gut at the vilification. A drunken lord driving his carriage off the road was hardly his mother’s fault. His chest tightened until his lungs were starved. Not that he was surprised by the accusation, just by his own visceral reaction, when there was nothing this decayed piece of flesh could do to her any more. ‘But for you, my mother would be alive today.’

Yet even as he spoke the words, the old guilt rose up to choke him. The knowledge that he had done nothing to save her. ‘But she beat you in the end.’

The old man sneered. ‘Did she now?’

The urge to stop the vile tongue edged his vision in red. Involuntarily his fists clenched. His palms tingled with the desire to tighten around the scrawny neck, to feel the flesh and bones crush in on his windpipe. Watch the life fade from those cruel eyes and silence his lips for ever.

He reached for his hard-won iron control over his temper, shocked at how close it was to slipping from his grasp at this long-awaited moment, grabbed a breath of air and let the heat dissipate. He would not let his anger overpower his reason. He knew the penalty for doing so. It would rob him of his victory as it has robbed him of his mother. There was no need for anger, not now, when he’d won. He shrugged.

The old devil grinned a death’s-head smile. ‘Look at you, apeing the gentleman in your fine clothes, with not an ounce of nobility in your blood. It is a wonder decent society tolerates you at all.’

He smiled his own mocking smile. ‘They welcome me with open arms. It is the prospect of a title that does it, you know.’

Something flashed in the old man’s eyes. If Bane hadn’t known better, he might have thought it was admiration. It was more likely rage at being defeated in his plan to be rid of his cuckoo in the nest. Thanks to his rough-and-ready upbringing by his maternal uncle, and later his years of misery at school and university, Bane had no doubts about his ability to withstand any torment his grandfather might devise. He’d spent his life preparing for this moment.

He moved closer to the head of the bed, lowering his voice. ‘You sent for me, old man, and here I am. Speak your piece. I am a busy man.’

‘A coalminer. A labourer for hire.’ Scorn dripped from the old man’s thin lips like poison. Spittle spattered his chin and the lapels of the silken robe bearing the Beresford emblem in gold.

‘Aye,’ Bane said. ‘I know how to earn my keep.’ Not that he laboured with his hands any more, but he could if need be. He let his gaze drift around the worn bed hangings and worn furniture. ‘And I know how to follow your example, spending money on idle pursuits in town.’ He’d done his share of playing the debauched nobleman since making his bows at court, much to the displeasure of both sides of his family. But he hadn’t been wasting his time, no matter what they thought.

The old man raised a hand and pointed a crooked finger at the young men nearby. ‘They are real Beresfords.’ His whispery voice flicked like a whip at Bane’s pride.

He bared his teeth in a hard smile. His was, after all, the final triumph. ‘Too bad. There is nothing anyone can do about it.’

‘No?’ A calculating gleam entered the faded blue eyes and his lips twisted. His gaze darted to the far side of the bed, to the huddle just beyond the lamplight. ‘Jeffrey. Gerald. Come to me.’

The two young men came forwards. The dandy, Jeffrey, at a saunter, meeting Bane’s gaze surprisingly coolly. The younger cousin, Gerald, known to Bane only as a name, ran to the old man’s side and knelt, clutching one of those misshapen hands. ‘Grandfather, do not upset yourself.’ The boy looked up at Bane. ‘Leave him in peace.’

Beresford pulled his hand free and stared at the two young men with a wry expression. ‘These are my grandsons. True nobility. Real Beresfords.’ He turned his head on the pillow to look at Bane. ‘But whose spawn are you?’

Whose bastard, he meant. It wasn’t anything Bane hadn’t heard before. It barely registered, but the soft gasp coming from somewhere in the shadows cut at him like a whip. The girl. He knew it instinctively. He forced himself not to look her way, despite feeling the intensity of her gaze grazing his skin. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said coldly. ‘I am your legal heir, so that pair of spoiled ninnyhammers had best crawl at my feet if they want crumbs from my table.’ He took pleasure in speaking in the rough tones of his mother’s people.

The old man grunted and struggled up on to one elbow, pointing at Bane’s face with a crooked finger. ‘Think you’ve bested me, do you? You’ve got nerve, I’ll credit you that. I’ve watched you. I’ve got your measure. If you want the wealth and power that goes with the title, then you’ll dance to my tune.’

Ranger, by the door, rumbled low in his throat.

‘Grandfather!’ the young lad at his side said, trying to ease him back down on to the pillows.

His grandfather brushed him aside. ‘It takes a clever man to best a Beresford.’ His laugh crackled like tearing paper. ‘I’m only sorry I won’t be here to see it.’

Bane shot him a considering look. The old man seemed just too sure of himself. ‘I won’t be controlled, old man. You should know that by now.’

As the dying man collapsed against the pillows, his gaze sought out the young woman he’d spoken to earlier. ‘Don’t be so sure.’

Who the devil was she? Bane sent her a baleful glance. She inched deeper into the shadows, but her blue eyes, her Beresford-blue eyes, never left his face and they held a kind of fascinated horror.

The earl’s gaze dropped to his other grandsons and moisture ran down his cheeks, glistening, running into the crevasses on his cheeks. Then he drew in a shuddering breath, his jaw working. He turned his head and his eyes, still wet with tears, fixed on Bane. ‘You’ll do your duty by the family.’

‘I have no family in this house.’ Bane let his scorn show on his face. ‘You failed to be rid of me when you had the chance and they bear the consequence. The sins of the father will be visited upon these children of your line. And there will be no more.’

The old man chuckled, a grim sound in the quiet room. ‘Cocksure, aren’t you. And proud. Yet you hold the losing hand.’

The wry amusement gave Bane pause. Intimidation. The old man excelled at terrifying those weaker than himself. Bane was not his or anyone else’s victim. He’d made himself too strong to be any man’s punching bag. He leaned over, speaking only for the old man to hear. ‘You forget, it will all be within my control. My only regret is that you won’t see the desecration of your family name.’ He flicked a glance at his cousins, the coolly insolent one who hid his true nature from the world and the half-scared boy. ‘It would do them good to work at some low honest task for their bread.’

The old man groaned, but there was something odd in his tone, as if he wasn’t so much in agony, but stifling amusement. ‘You think you are such a cold devil,’ he muttered. ‘I will be sorry to miss the heat of your anger.’

Bane drew back, searching that vindictive face. ‘What have you done?’

‘You’ll see.’

A resounding crack of thunder split the air at the same time as lightning flickered around the room. The storm’s last violent convulsion.

Ranger howled. The old man jerked upright in that wild blue light, the colour draining from his face, from his clothing, from the twisted hand clutching his throat. He sank back with a sigh.

The kneeling boy uttered a cry of despair. Jeffrey leaned over and felt for his pulse. Mrs Hampton rushed forwards. The tall girl remained where she was, a hand flat across her mouth, her eyes wide.

Bane curled his lip as he looked down on the empty shell of what had once been a man who had wielded his power to harm the innocent.

Bane was the earl now. And to hell with the Beresfords.

He spared a last glance for those gathering close around the bed and shrugged. Let them weep and wail at the old man’s passing. It was of no import to him.

Weariness swept through him. After travelling hard for three days, he needed a bath and a good night’s sleep. He had a great deal to do on the morrow if he was to set his plans in motion. He had debts to pay and a coalmine to purchase.

As he turned to leave, he caught sight of the young woman hanging back, her expression one of distaste. What mischief had the old man planned for her? Nothing his grandfather could do from beyond the grave could harm Bane. But he did not like to think of yet another innocent female destroyed by his machinations.

Unless she wasn’t as innocent as she appeared. Was anyone in this family innocent? It was hard to think so. And if she wasn’t, then Bane was more than a match for her, too.

He snapped his fingers for Ranger and headed down the corridor, hoping like hell he could find the way back through the maze of passages to his assigned chamber.

While the family members hovered and wept around the body of the old earl, Mary made good her escape. Her brain whirled. Her stomach cramped. And she ran like a cowardly rabbit.

When she’d been invited to meet her benefactor, the man she’d recently learned had paid for her schooling, her every meal, for most of her life, she had wondered—no, truly, she had dreamed that at last some family member, some distant relative, had decided to claim her as their own. A childhood fantasy finally fulfilled.

She’d certainly had no idea that the man was at death’s door until the butler guided her into that room earlier this evening. And when she’d asked her question with breathless hope and seen the surprise in those watery blue eyes and the wry twist to his lips, she’d felt utterly foolish.

Was she a member of his family? The answer had been a flat no.

Sally Ladbrook had been right. The man had viewed her as a good work, a charitable impulse, and was looking for recognition before he met his end. Unless he intended to impose the obligation on his heir.

She shivered. Just the thought of the new earl’s overwhelmingly menacing presence in that room made her heart race and her knees tremble. She’d been transfixed by the sheer male strength of him, while he had stood in the shadows as still as death.

She halted at the end of the corridor and glanced back. A sliver of light spilling on to the runner revealed the location of that horrid room. Never in her life had she witnessed anything so morbid. She rubbed at her jaw, trying to erase the sensation of cold papery fingers on her skin and shuddered.

To make it worse, once the heir had stepped out of the shadows, the hatred in the room had been palpable. Like hot oil on metal, hissing and spitting first from one direction and then another, scalding wherever it landed.

And the man. The new earl. So dark. So unexpectedly large, even handsome in a brutal way. A powerful man who had overshadowed his dying grandfather like some avenging devil.

He didn’t walk, he prowled. He didn’t speak, he made utterances in a voice composed of velvet and sandpaper. And his eyes. His eyes were as deep as an abyss when he had stared directly at her. That look owed nothing to the gloom in the room, for it was the same when he stood within the light of the torches. Worse. Because she could see the pinpoints of flickering light reflected in his gaze and still make out nothing in their shadowed depths.

She—who prided herself on being able to stand in front of a class of spoiled daughters and hold her own, at least on the surface, and who, as a charity boarder, had suffered pity and sly comments about her poverty all those years—had managed to stand up to the gloating way the old man had looked at her and crushed any hope that she might have found her place in the world.

But when that piercing gaze looking out from the shadows in the doorway had tangled with hers, it had sapped her courage dry. She’d scuttled ignominiously back to her place without a shred of dignity remaining.

The sooner she left this place, this house with its dark undercurrents, the better. She’d done her duty. Offered her thanks. Surely she was free to go? She would leave first thing in the morning.

She glanced left and right. Which way? The maid who had brought her to the dying man’s room had found her way with unerring ease, but Mary no longer had a clue which way they had come, there had been so many twists and turns on their journey from her chamber. Not to mention the odd staircase.

Part-dissolved abbey, part-Tudor mansion, part-renaissance estate, it sprawled and rambled inside and out. She’d glimpsed the house at dusk, perched high on a Cornish cliff, crenulated towers and chimney pots rising to the sky. A complete muddle of a house.

Her room was in one of those square towers. At the north end, the butler had told her when he escorted her there upon her arrival. The tower nearest the abbey ruins. She could see them through her small window. She had also heard the muffled rumble of the ocean somewhere deep below the house, in its very foundations. A very ominous sound. She shuddered as she imagined the house undermined by the force of the sea.

She eyed her two choices and selected the one that seemed to amble north. Picking up her skirts for speed, she hurried on, wishing there was more light, or a servant to show her the way.

Another corridor branched off to her right, going south? Or had that last corner she had turned set her off course? The maid had turned off the main corridor, hadn’t she? More than once. She plunged into the new hallway. It looked no more familiar than the last.

She needed help.

She tried the first door she came to. A bedroom, its furniture huddled beneath holland covers. If there ever had been a bell rope, it had been removed.

Blast. She returned to the corridor, heading for another room further along.

Footsteps. Behind her. Thank God. Help at last.

She turned around.

A light flickered and stopped. Whoever held the candle remained masked in shadow.

The wind howled through a nearby crevice, lifting the hair at her nape. Her heart picked up speed. The girls at school had told late-night stories of ghosts and hauntings that started like this. Deliciously wicked in their frightening aspects and heroic deeds. Figments of imagination. She did not believe in ghosts. People like her, practical people, did not have the luxury of such flights of fancy, yet she could not quite quell the fear gripping her chest. ‘Who is there?’ She was shocked at the tremble in her voice.

The light drew closer. A candle held in a square-fingered hand joined to a brawny figure still in the darkness. Him. The new earl.

How she knew, she wasn’t sure, but her skin prickled with the knowledge. Heat flushed up from her belly. ‘My lord?’ she said. Her voice quavering just a little more than she would have liked. ‘Lord Beresford?’

The candle went upwards, lighting his harsh face.

‘Great goliaths,’ she said, letting go of her breath. ‘Do you always creep around hallways in such a fashion?’ Oops. That sounded a bit too much like the schoolteacher taking a pupil to task.

The eyes staring down at her were not dark as she had thought in the old earl’s bedroom. They were as grey as storm clouds. And watchful.

‘Are you lost?’ he drawled in that deep mocking voice with its hint of roughness.

‘Certainly not,’ she replied, discomposed by his obvious indifference. Heat rushed to her cheeks and she was glad the dim light would not reveal her embarrassment. She let her gaze fall away.

‘Liar,’ he said softly.

She bristled.

‘That’s better.’

A snuffling sound drew her gaze down. The dog. It sank to its haunches and watched her with its head cocked on one side. It was enormous. ‘What is better?’ she asked, keeping a wary eye on the dog.

‘It is better when you stand up straight, instead of hunching over like a scared schoolgirl.’

As a schoolgirl, she had tried to disguise her ungainly height. It spoke to her discomfort that she had fallen back into that old habit.

She looked up past the wide chest and broad shoulders, past the snowy cravat and strong column of throat, his full mobile mouth at eye level, then up to meet his gaze. Most men were either her height or shorter. This one was taller than her by half a head—he must be inches above six foot tall—and he reeked of danger.

What snatches of conversation she’d heard between him and the dying earl had been positively menacing. And, unless she was badly mistaken, some of the venom shifting back and forth between them had been directed at her.

‘If you will excuse me, I must be on my way.’

‘On your way where?’

‘To my room.’

He shot her a wolfish smile. ‘So that was not your room. The one you just left.’

‘No,’ she muttered, making to step past him.

‘What were you doing in that chamber?’

Did he think she was trying to steal? She stiffened her spine, meeting his gaze full on. Such directness usually sent men running for the hills. On this one it apparently had no effect. Or none visible, though she did sense a sharpening of interest in those wintery eyes.

She huffed out a breath of defeat. ‘I will admit I am a little turned about. My chamber is in the tower at the north end of the house. I thought I would ring for a servant to guide me, but there was no bell pull in the first room I tried.’

‘A clever thought.’

‘I am clever.’ She bit her lip. That was just the sort of quick retort men did not like. A habit of bravado honed in the schoolroom.

He didn’t seem to notice. ‘Follow me.’ He strode past her down the corridor, the dog following at his heels, leaving her to trot along behind as best she might.

He took a flight of stairs down and then passed along a stone corridor that smelled of must and damp. She was sure she had not come this way.

He hesitated at yet another intersection of passageways.

She huffed out a breath. ‘Don’t tell me, you are lost too.’

He gave her a scornful look. ‘I never get lost.’

Doubt filled her mind. ‘Have you ever been to this house before?’

‘North is this way.’ He set off once more with the dog padding beside him.

Hah. Avoidance. He was just as lost as she was. More lost. Because she was quite sure from the increasingly dank feel to the air that they were now in the cellars. The sea growled louder too. Typical. Why would men never admit to being lost?

About to insist they stop, she was surprised when he took off up a circular flight of narrow stairs she hadn’t noticed. At the top, he turned left and there they were, at her chamber door. How irritating. And she still had no idea how she got here. It didn’t matter. She had no reason to learn her way around, since she would be departing at once.

‘Thank you, my lord.’ She dipped her best curtsy and prayed he would not hear the wry note in her voice.

He held his candle high and caught her chin in long strong fingers just like the old man had done. But these fingers were warm with youth and strong with vigour and, while firm, they were also gentle. She jerked her head, but he held her fast.

She stared up at his face, at the beautifully moulded lips set in a straight line hovering above hers. His head dipped a fraction. Angled. She could feel his breath, warm on her cheek, inhaled a hint of cologne, something male, mingled with leather and horse and briny air that made her feel dizzy.

She drew in a deep breath as his gaze fell on her mouth, lingering there, until she thought he would kiss her. Longed that he would to break this dreadful tension between them.

Nervous, she licked her lips.

His eyes narrowed and he raised that piercing gaze to meet hers as if he would read her mind. Stroked her chin with his thumb and, she shivered. He leaned closer and for a wild moment, she thought he really did intend to kiss her and her body hummed at the thought.

Instead, he spoke. ‘Who are you?’ he rasped softly.

‘Mary,’ she managed to gasp in a breathless whisper, her breathing beyond her control. ‘Mary Wilding.’

‘Wilding?’ A brow went up. ‘And what brought you here, Miss Wilding?’

She swallowed. ‘I was invited. By the earl.’

‘The late earl.’

She nodded.

He stepped back, releasing her face. ‘And what is your purpose here, I wonder?’

‘It doesn’t matter. I will be leaving first thing.’

‘I see. Well, Miss Wilding, I bid you goodnight. We will talk before you go.’

She remained frozen as he disappeared back down the twisting stairs and she was left alone, in the silence, not hearing even his footsteps and feeling strangely giddy.

Breathless, from … fear? The fluttering in her belly, the tremble in her hands, could be nothing else. Though what made her fearful, she wasn’t sure. Perhaps her reactions? To him? Would she have actually let him kiss her, had he wanted to do so?

Could she have stopped such a powerful man taking whatever he wanted? A little thrill rippled through her. Perverse. Unwanted.

All he had wanted was to question her.

She pressed cold fingers to her hot cheeks and hauled in a deep breath before stepping inside her small chamber. While thanking her benefactor had been one of the less pleasant experiences of her life, meeting the new earl had been something else entirely. Disturbing and exciting. It might be as well to avoid him before she left.

Coward.

Chapter Two

The maid Betsy, assigned to help Mary dress, arrived at nine the next morning.

Mary didn’t needed help dressing. Just as always, she’d been awake and dressed by six, before light touched the grey wintery sky. At school, it was her task to see that the girls were washed and dressed before they came to breakfast. The maid had to content herself with drawing back the curtains and putting coal on the fire. ‘This room is always cold,’ the girl announced cheerfully. ‘Will there be anything else, miss?’

‘I would like a carriage to take me to St Ives.’

‘You will need to speak to Mr Manners,’ the girl said, her Cornish vowels hard to decipher.

Of course. The butler. He would be in charge of such things. ‘Where will I find him?’

The small brown-eyed girl raised her brows. ‘In the breakfast room. Serving the family.’

The grieving family. She wanted nothing to do with any of them, especially the new earl. But since she needed to order the carriage, she straightened her shoulders and smiled. ‘Perhaps you would be good enough to guide me there?’

Betsy bobbed a curtsy. ‘Follow me, miss.’

It wasn’t long before she was deposited in front of a large oak door off the entrance hall. ‘In there, miss.’

‘Thank you.’ Mary sailed through the door as if she had been making grand entrances all her life. Or at least she hoped she gave that impression.

What a relief. No brooding earl awaited her in the oak-panelled room with its polished furniture and gleaming silver. Only his cousins sat at the table. Blond and handsome, they rose to their feet as she entered.

‘Good morning,’ she said.

‘Good morning, Miss Wilding,’ they replied gravely.

The older one, Mr Jeffrey Beresford, gave her a swift perusal. A slightly pained expression entered his vivid-blue eyes. No doubt he thought her dreadfully shabby in her Sunday-best dress, but it was grey and she’d thought it the most appropriate under the circumstances. The younger one nodded morosely.

Both young men wore dark coats and black armbands. Of Mrs Hampton there was no sign. No doubt she preferred to breakfast in her room on such a sorrowful day.

‘Miss Wilding,’ the butler said, pulling out a chair opposite the Beresford cousins. She sat.

They followed suit.

‘Did you sleep well, Miss Wilding?’ Mr Beresford asked, assuming the duty of host in the earl’s absence.

‘Yes, thank you.’ She certainly wasn’t going to admit to her mind replaying the scene with the earl outside her chamber door over and over as she restlessly tossed and turned.

‘Really?’ Mr Hampton said, looking up, his face angelic in a shaft of sunlight that at that moment had broken through the clouds and found its way into the dining room to rest on him.

‘Is there some reason why I should not?’ she asked a little stiffly, surprised by his sudden interest.

He looked at her moodily. ‘They do say as how the White Lady’s ghost haunts the north tower.’

‘You are an idiot, Ger,’ the other cousin said. ‘Don’t listen to him, Miss Wilding. It is an old wives’ tale.’

‘‘Tis not,’ Gerald said, his lips twisting. ‘One of the servants saw her last week.’

‘And that is a bouncer,’ his cousin replied repressively. ‘One servant saw her fifty years ago.’

The younger man scowled.

Mary felt sorry for him. Boys liked their ghost stories as much as foolish young girls did, no doubt. ‘It would take more than a ghost to scare me,’ she said calmly, ‘if I actually believed in them.’ It would take a tall dark earl with a sinful mouth to make her quiver in fear. Or quiver with something.

The young man looked a little insulted. ‘If you see her, you will tell me, won’t you? I’ve been keeping track of her sightings.’ He pushed his food around with his fork. ‘They say she appears when there is to be a death in the house.’ The utter belief in his voice gave her a strange slithery sensation in her stomach. It also reminded her of last night’s events with a pang of guilt.

‘Although I had never met your grandfather before last night, I hope you will accept my deepest sympathy for your loss.’

Both young men nodded their acceptance of her condolence.

‘Coffee, miss?’ the butler asked.

She usually had tea in the morning. And only one cup. But there was another scent floating in the air, making her mouth water and her stomach give little hops of pleasure. ‘Chocolate, please, Manners.’ She’d had her first taste of chocolate this morning when Betsy had brought her tray and really couldn’t resist having it one last time.

The man poured a cup from the silver chocolate pot on the sideboard and added a generous dollop of cream. Such luxury. Wait until she told Sally. Her friend and employer would be so envious. Chocolate was one of those luxuries they dreamt of on a cold winter’s night.

The butler brought her toast on a plate and offered her a selection of platters. Deciding to make the most of what was offered—after all, she was an invited guest—she took some shirred eggs and ham and sausage and tucked in with relish. Breakfast at Ladbrook’s rarely consisted of more than toast and jam and porridge in the winter months. Ladbrook’s School for Young Ladies was rarely full to capacity and the best food always went to the paying pupils. As a charity case, she had managed on leftovers. Since becoming employed as a teacher things had improved, but not by much.

Hope of improving the school was why she had agreed to travel all the way from Wiltshire to meet the late earl. If he had proved to be a distant relation, she had thought to convince him to provide funds for improvements, to make it more fashionable and therefore profitable, as well as enable the taking in of one or two more charity boarders like herself.

She let go of a sigh. The earl’s death had put paid to all her hopes, including any hope of some family connection. She ought to speak of the school’s needs to the new earl, she supposed, but his behaviour so far had led her to the conclusion that, rather than a man of charitable bent, he was likely to be one of the scandalous rakes one read about in broadsheets and romantic novels.

‘What do you think of the Abbey, Miss Wilding?’ Mr Hampton asked.

‘It’s a dreadful pile,’ his cousin put in before she could answer. ‘Don’t you think?’

Tact seemed to be the best course between two extremes. ‘I have seen very little, so would find it hard to form an opinion, Mr Hampton.’

‘Call me Gerald. Mr Hampton was my father. That pink of the ton is Jeffrey.’

His older cousin inclined his head, clearly accepting the description with aplomb. Mary smiled her thanks, not quite sure what lay behind this courtesy for a virtual stranger.

‘What shall we call you?’ he asked. ‘Cousin?’

She stiffened. Had they also formed the mistaken impression they were related, or had they heard the earl’s mocking reply to her question and thought to follow suit? Heat rushed to her cheeks. ‘You may call me Miss Wilding.’

Gerald frowned. ‘You sound like my old governess.’

‘I am a schoolteacher.’

Jeffrey leaned back in his chair and cast an impatient glance at Gerald. ‘Miss Wilding it is then, ma’am. At least you are not claiming to be a Beresford.’

Mary caught her breath at this obvious jibe at his absent older cousin. She had heard some of his conversation with the old earl and gathered there was some doubt about the legitimacy of his birth. She hadn’t expected the issue addressed so openly.

Last night she’d had the sense that the old man’s barbs had found their mark with the heir. Not that he’d had shown any reaction. But there had been something running beneath the surface. Anger. Perhaps resentment. And a sense of aloneness, as if he too had hoped for acceptance from this family.

She certainly did not approve of sniping at a person behind their back and their family quarrels were certainly none of her business, so she ignored the comment and buttered her toast. She had more important matters on her mind. Getting back to school. Preparing her lessons. Helping Sally find ways to reduce expenses still further if the earl’s munificence was indeed ended.

She smiled at the butler as he added chocolate to her cup. ‘Manners, may I request the carriage take me to St Ives after breakfast? I would like to catch the stage back to Wiltshire.’

‘I can’t do that, miss,’ Manners replied stone-faced.

Startled, she stared at him.

Gerald frowned. ‘Why not?’

‘His lordship’s orders. You will have to apply to him, miss.’

The heat in her cheeks turned to fire at the thought of asking his lordship for anything.

‘Damn him,’ Jeffrey said with more heat than he seemed wont to display. ‘He hasn’t been here five minutes and already he’s acting …’ His voice tailed off and he reddened as he realised Gerald’s avid gaze was fixed on his face.

‘It isn’t fair,’ Gerald said. ‘You should be the heir. He should have the decency to withdraw his claim.’

‘He can’t,’ Jeffrey said. ‘The heir is the heir. The proof is irrefutable.’

‘It still isn’t right,’ Gerald muttered.

Jeffrey gave Mary an apologetic smile. ‘Gerald takes things too much to heart. And I am sorry about the carriage, Miss Wilding. Would you like me to speak to … to his lordship?’ He stumbled on the last word as if he was not quite as sanguine as he made out.

‘I would certainly hate to inconvenience anyone,’ Mary said. ‘Perhaps I shall walk.’

‘There’s a path along the cliffs,’ Gerald said. ‘I’ve walked it often. Take you a good while, though.’

‘I advise you not to try it, Miss Wilding,’ Jeffrey drawled. ‘The Cornish coast is dangerous for those who do not know it.’

Another roadblock. Her spine stiffened. She gave him a tight smile ‘Thank you for the warning. Perhaps I should seek the earl’s permission to take the carriage, after all.’

Or not. How difficult could it be to walk along the coast? Sea on one side, land on the other and no earthly chance of getting lost. Unlike her experience in this house. And she had absolutely no intention of asking his lordship for anything. The thought of doing so made her heart race.

‘Where is the new lordship,’ Gerald asked, his lip curling with distaste.

‘I believe he rode out, sir,’ the butler said. ‘More coffee?’

Gerald waved him off.

‘I wonder what he is riding?’ Jeffrey said. ‘A man like him probably has no idea of good horseflesh.’

Like him? Now that was pure snobbery. She wondered what they said about a woman like her, a penniless schoolteacher, behind her back. No doubt they had thought she had come to ingratiate herself. How mortifying that they were very nearly right. She felt her shoulders rise in that old defensive posture and forced them to relax, keeping her expression neutral. These young noblemen were nowhere near as vicious as schoolgirls, nothing to fear at all.

‘Aye,’ Gerald said. ‘A man like him will be all show and no go.’

Jeffrey raised a brow. ‘As if you would know, cuz. Isn’t it time your mother let you have a decent mount of your own?’

Gerald hunched a shoulder. ‘I’m to get one on my birthday. And a phaeton.’

‘God help us all,’ Jeff said sotto voce.

The door swung back and the earl strode in. His silver gaze swept the room, taking in the occupants in one swift glance before he made for the empty place at the head of the table.

The new earl was just as impressive in the grey of morning as he had been in the glow of lamplight. Perhaps more so. His black coat hugged his broad shoulders and his cravat was neatly tied. He was not wearing an armband. Perhaps he considered the black coat quite enough, though the rich fabric of his cream waistcoat, embroidered with blue sprigs, suggested he hadn’t given mourning a thought when he dressed.

The shadowed jaw of the previous night was gone, his face smooth and recently shaved. He was, as her girls would say when they thought she could not hear, devilishly handsome. Devilish being the most apt word she could think of in respect to the earl, since his face was set in the granite-hard lines of a fallen angel who found his fate grim.

Oh, jumping Jehosophat, did it matter how he looked? After today, she would never see him again.

‘Good morning,’ he said to the room at large.

The two young men mumbled grudging greetings.

‘Good morning, my lord,’ Mary said with a polite calm. It wasn’t right to treat him like some sort of pariah in his own house. She wouldn’t do it. She would be civil. Even if it was hard to breathe now he took up so much of the air in the room.

His eyes widened a fraction. ‘Miss Wilding. Up and about so early?’

‘As is my usual wont,’ she replied, sipping her chocolate, not tasting it at all any more, because all she was aware of was him.

Heat rushed to her cheeks and she hoped he did not notice.

After responding to Manners’s enquiries about his preferences for breakfast, he picked up the newspaper beside his plate and disappeared behind it.

A strained silence filled the room. It demanded that someone break it. It was just too obvious that they had stopped talking the moment he entered. He would think they were talking about him. They weren’t. At least, not all of the time. It made her feel very uncomfortable, as if her skin was stretched too tight.

She waited until he had eaten most of his breakfast. Sally, widowed by two husbands and therefore an expert, always said men were not worth talking to until they had filled their stomachs. ‘My lord?’

He looked up, frowning.

Perhaps he hadn’t eaten enough. Well, it was too late to draw back. ‘May I request that your coachman drive me to St Ives this morning? It is time I returned home.’

He frowned. ‘Not today. Your presence is required in two hours’ time for the reading of the will.’

The will? What did that have to do with her? ‘That is not necessary, surely?’

He gave her a look that froze her to the spot. ‘Would I ask it, if it were not?’

She dragged her gaze from his and put down her cup. A tiny hope unfurled in her chest. Perhaps the earl had left something for the school after all. Had she been too hasty in thinking her quest unsuccessful?

The earl was watching her face with a cynical twist to his lips, as if she was some sort of carrion crow picking over a carcase. Guilt twisted in her stomach. She had no reason to feel guilty. The school was a worthy cause, even if it did also benefit her. And if she had previously hoped the earl’s summons had signified something more, something of a familial nature, those expectations had been summarily disabused and were no one’s concern but her own. ‘If it is required, then I will attend.’

The earl pushed his plate aside and pushed to his feet. ‘Eleven o’clock in the library, Miss Wilding. Try not to be late.’

She bristled, but managed to hang on to her aplomb. ‘I am never late, my lord.’

He gazed at her for a long moment and she was sure she saw a gleam of amusement in his eyes, but it was gone too fast for her to be certain. ‘Unless you become lost, I assume.’

Once more heat flooded her face at the memory of his rescue the previous evening and her shocking responses to his closeness. Her incomprehensible longings, which must not recur. It was ungentlemanly of him to remind her.

He departed without waiting for a reply, no doubt assuming his orders would be carried out. And if they weren’t then no doubt the autocratic man would find a way to rectify the matter.

‘I’m for the stables,’ Jeffrey said. ‘I want to take a look at his horseflesh.’

He wanted to mock.

‘Can I come?’ Gerald asked, his expression pleading.

‘If you wish,’ his cousin said, kindly, which made Mary think a great deal more of him. He bowed to Mary and the two of them strolled away.

Now what should she do? Go back to her room and risk getting lost? Sally hadn’t expected her to spend more than one night here at the Abbey, no matter what hopes Mary had secretly held. What she should do was despatch a letter to Sally telling her what was happening and why her return might be delayed by another day. She could while away the two hours before the appointed time in writing and reading more enjoyably than spending the time wandering the chilly corridors of this rambling mansion looking for her room.

‘Will you direct me to the library, Manners? I assume there is paper and pen there?’

The butler bowed. ‘Yes, miss. It is located further along this hallway. You cannot miss it.’

If anyone could miss anything when it came to directions, she could and would. But that was her own personal cross to bear. ‘Thank you.’

He gave her a kind smile. ‘There is a footman going to the village this afternoon, if you would like a letter posted, miss. Ring the bell when you are finished and he’ll come and collect it. You will find sealing wax and paper in the desk drawer, and ink on the inkstand.’

She smiled her thanks and made her escape.

The library proved to be exactly where the butler had said and she found it without difficulty.

Nirvana could not have looked any more inviting. Shelves, packed with leather-bound books in shades of blue, red and green, rose from floor to ceiling on three dark-panelled walls. Wooden chairs strategically placed beside tables of just the right height encouraged a person to spread books out at will. Deep overstuffed sofas and chairs upholstered in fabrics faded to soft brown tempted the reader who liked to curl up with a novel. Cushioned window seats offered comfort and light on dark winter days. All was overseen by a large oak desk at one end.

The delights on offer tested her determination to write to Sally first and read afterwards. But she managed it, sitting at the heavy desk, putting out of her mind what she could not say about the new earl as she wrote of the demise of their donor.

She flicked the feather end of her quill across her chin. Should she mention a possibility of some small sum in the will? It seemed a bit presumptuous. She decided to write only of her delayed return. A mere day or two, she said.

Having rung the bell and sent off her missive, she turned her attention to the feast of books. She selected a book of poems by Wordsworth and settled into one of the window seats.

She didn’t have long to indulge because, within the half-hour, Mr Savary, the solicitor who had been at the earl’s bedside, arrived with a box full of papers and began fussing with them on the desk.

Mary decided she would remain where she was, at the furthest point in the room from where the family would conduct its business.

At a few minutes past eleven, the family members straggled in. First Gerald with his mother. Mrs Hampton looked very becoming in black. It suited her air of delicacy. She would have been an extraordinarily beautiful woman in her youth. She and her son, who took after her in the beauty department, sat beside the blazing hearth not far from the desk.

Jeffrey, his saunter as pronounced as any Bond Street beau, came next. Not that Mary had ever seen a Bond Street beau, but she’d seen cartoons in the paper, read descriptions of their antics and could use her imagination. He struck a languid pose at the fireplace, one arm resting on the mantel while he gazed pensively into the flames. Regretting being cut out of the title? He didn’t seem to care much about anything. Perhaps it was the idea of the earl holding the purse-strings that had him looking so thoughtful.

The upper servants gathered just inside the doorway: the butler, the housekeeper and a gentleman in a sombre suit who could have been anything from a parson to a land steward. They must all have expectations. The old earl had proved generous to her over the past many years, so why not to his servants? Though, in truth, on meeting him, she had not liked him one little bit. There had been an air of maliciousness about him.

She was relieved they were not related. She really was.

But if he left the school a small sum of money, an annuity, or a lump sum, it would be a blessing for which she would be suitably grateful, no matter her personal feelings. She put her book on the table at her elbow and folded her hands in her lap, trying not to look hopeful.

But where was the earl?

Ah, here he came, last but definitely not least. He prowled into the room, looking far more sartorially splendid than the dandified Jeffrey. Perhaps it was his size. Or the sheer starkness of a black coat against the white of his cravat. The room certainly seemed much smaller upon his entrance. And even a little airless.

His hard gaze scanned the room, missing nothing. Indeed, she had the feeling his eyes kept on moving until he discovered her whereabouts. He looked almost relieved, as if he feared she might have loped off, as Sally’s cockney coachman would have said.

Ignoring the group at the hearth, he swung one of the plain wooden chairs near her window seat around and sat astride it. Arms across the back, he fixed the solicitor with a grim stare. ‘Get on with it, then, man.’

The fussy little solicitor tugged at his neckcloth, then broke the seal on a rolled document. He spread it out on the desk. ‘This being the last—’

‘No need to read all the curlicues and periods,’ the earl interrupted. ‘Just give us the details.’

‘Yes, my lord.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Basically, the title goes to you, but all the unentailed income goes to Miss Wilding on condition that she marry within the year.’

The earl’s gaze, steel hard beneath lowered brows, cut to her face. A muscle jumped in his jaw.

What had the solicitor said? No, she knew what he had said. But what did it mean? The unentailed income?

‘There are ten guineas for Manners, five for Mrs Davis and another ten for Ragwell for his excellent stewardship this past many years.’

The servants mumbled and sounded pleased. They shuffled out of the room at the solicitor’s wave of a hand.

Mrs Hampton put a hand to her throat. ‘What about my son? And Jeffrey.’

‘It is my understanding that the late earl passed on any personal trinkets prior to his … his—’

‘His death,’ the earl growled.

‘I got his ring,’ Gerald announced, waving his hand about for everyone to see.

‘The seal of the Beresfords belongs to me,’ the earl said with almost a snarl.

Gerald thumbed his nose. ‘This was my grandmother’s ring.’

The earl scowled. ‘Then where is the seal?’

Gerald shrugged.

‘With the earl’s effects,’ the lawyer said stiffly.

Mrs Hampton’s pallor increased. ‘I thought there was to be some—’ She caught herself.

The earl stood up and looked down at the little solicitor. ‘How much of the income from the estate is unentailed?’ His voice was soft, but no one in the room could possibly doubt his ire.

‘All of it,’ the little man squeaked.

The ensuing pause was charged like air before a storm. The earl’s gaze shifted to her and the heat in their depths flared bright before he turned back to the lawyer. ‘And you permitted this abomination? This dividing of the money from the land? What man in his right mind does such a thing?’

‘The late earl was not always rational when it came to the matter of …’ His breathless voice tailed off.

‘His heir,’ the earl said flatly.

‘I followed instructions,’ the lawyer pleaded.

The earl’s silver gaze found hers again. This time it was colder than ice. ‘Very clever indeed, Miss Wilding.’

She stiffened. Outrage flooding her with heat. ‘I do not understand what this means.’ At least she was hoping that what she understood was not what was really happening.

‘You got the fortune,’ the earl said. ‘And I got the expenses.’

Then she had interpreted the lawyer’s words correctly. How was this possible?

Beresford turned on the solicitor. ‘It can be overturned.’

The man shook his head. ‘If Miss Wilding marries within the year, she gets all income from the estate. If not, the money goes to the Crown.’ He glanced down at his papers. ‘That is, unless she dies before the year is up.’

‘What happens if she dies?’ the earl asked harshly.

Mary froze in her seat. A shudder took hold of her body. The hairs on the back of her neck rose. The man spoke about her death without the slightest emotion. He was positively evil.

‘In that case, it goes to you, or to your heir, currently Mr Jeffrey Beresford, if you predecease him,’ the solicitor said. He smiled apologetically at the young man who was watching the earl with icy blue eyes and a very small smile.

The wretch was enjoying the earl’s shock.

The earl said something under his breath. It sounded suspiciously like a curse. ‘Clearly the man was disordered. What will the courts think of that?’

‘My father was not mad,’ Mrs Hampton said haughtily. ‘Madness does not run in the Beresford family. But you wouldn’t know that, since you have had nothing to do with any of us.’

Mary listened to what they were saying, heard them perfectly well, but it all seemed a great distance off. She didn’t think she’d taken a breath since the earl had explained. She worked a little moisture into her dry mouth. ‘The will requires that I marry in order to inherit?’

The lawyer nodded gravely. ‘Indeed. Within the year.’

‘Marry who?’ she asked.

The earl’s mouth curled in a predatory smile. ‘That is the question, isn’t it?’

Irritated beyond endurance, she rose to her feet. ‘You are hardly helpful, sir.’

Forced to rise also, the earl gave her a mirthless smile. ‘I thought you said you were clever, Miss Wilding.’

She looked at him blankly.

‘He means you must marry him,’ Gerald said, scowling. ‘But you could marry Jeffrey or me. That would put a spoke in his wheels.’

The earl glowered, but said nothing.

She strode over to the solicitor, whose forehead was beaded with sweat. He pulled out a kerchief and mopped his brow. ‘Well, Mr Savary, is it true?’ she asked. ‘Does the late earl’s will require me to marry …’ she waved an arm in the earl’s direction ‘… him?’

‘It is silent on the issue, Miss Wilding.’ He swallowed. ‘Under the law, no one can require your marriage to any particular person. However, if you wish to inherit the money, you must marry someone. Perhaps there is someone….’ His words tailed off at a low growl from the earl.

Someone. She wanted to laugh. And then she wanted to cry. Someone. She was a schoolteacher. A charity case. And a beanpole to boot. Suddenly a very rich beanpole. She glanced over at the earl. ‘No doubt there will be many someones lining up at my door on the morrow.’

The earl glared at her. ‘Over my dead body.’

‘Or over mine,’ she said as the full enormity of it all solidified in her mind.

‘There is that,’ he agreed.

‘Are you saying you intend us to marry?’ she asked.

He looked at her for a long moment and she had the feeling that sympathy lurked somewhere in those flat grey eyes, then they hardened to polished steel and she knew she was mistaken. ‘Marry to suit my grandfather?’ he rasped. ‘Not if I can help it.’

She flinched at the harshness of his reply and was glad that he did not see her reaction as he turned at once to the solicitor.

‘There must be some loophole you have not considered. Bring those papers to my study. I will review them in detail.’

He strode from the room.

Mrs Hampton gave Mary an accusatory glare. ‘Come, Gerald. Jeffrey. We need to talk.’ She departed in what appeared to be high dudgeon for some unknown destination with the two young men in tow.

Unsure what else to do, Mary gathered herself to return to her chamber. She needed time to think about this new development. She could only pray the earl would find a way out of the conundrum. She certainly did not want to, nor would she, marry him. Or anyone else for that matter. She’d put away the hopes for a husband many years before

‘Er, miss?’ Savary said.

‘Yes?’

‘There was one thing I forgot to mention to his lordship.’

She gazed at him askance. Forgetting to mention something to his lordship sounded like a serious mistake given the earl’s present mood. She had not thought the man so stupid. ‘What did you forget?’

‘He should have let me read things in order.’ He fussed with the papers on the desk. ‘You must have his permission. Whoever you choose to marry, he must approve.’

A burst of anger ripped through her at being required to bend to the earl’s wishes on this or any matter. Especially one so altogether personal. Proving herself to be suitable to work as a teacher, to gain her independence, had taken years of hard work. She wasn’t about to give it up on some stranger’s whim. ‘I suggest you hurry and tell his lordship the good news. I expect it will make him feel a great deal more sanguine about what has happened here today.’

‘Do you think so?’

A laugh bubbled up inside her. Hysteria, no doubt. ‘I have not the slightest idea of what goes on in his lordship’s mind.’ That much was certainly true. ‘Please excuse me.’

She stalked out of the room. Whether anger improved her sense of direction, or she was getting used to the Abbey, she found her way back to her room without any problem.

The room was chilly. It was the stone walls, she thought, rubbing her arms with her hands, then wrapping her old woollen shawl around her shoulders. Stone walls needed tapestries and blazing fires. She poked at the glowing embers and added more coal. Then she sat on the edge of the bed and stared through the diamond window-panes. From here she could see the crumbling walls of what had been the abbey church. And beyond it, the sea pounding on rocks.

Finally, she allowed herself to think about what had happened back there in the library.

Oh, heavens! Marry and inherit a fortune? How could this be?

Not for years had she imagined she would ever be married. She was not the kind of woman men took to wife. They liked little dainty things, simpering girls like the ones she helped train at Ladbrook’s School. Years ago, the idea of being a wife and a mother had made her heart miss a number of beats. How it had raced when she thought that Mr Allerdyce who had been so attentive, walking her home from church, treating her like a lady of importance, would come up to scratch, until Sally had discovered it was all a front. He was currying favour with Mary in order to get close to one of her pupils. An heiress. His parting words had made it very clear just what he thought of her as a woman. As hurtful and mortifying an experience as it had been, it had forced her to realise she would never be a wife.

Instead, she’d decided that her true vocation lay with her girls, being a teacher. That they were her family. She only had them for a short while, it was true, and their departures were always a wrench, but they were planned. It was not as though they abandoned her, but rather that she sent them out into the world with her blessing.

Now, this stranger, this deceased earl, had somehow engineered her into a marriage to a man she knew nothing about. She swallowed. What would it be liked to be married to such a man? He’d want an heir. Children. A family, just as she’d always dreamed. Her heart raced. Her chest tightened at the thought of being a mother.

It wouldn’t be a marriage born of romantic love. It would be for convenience. A practical arrangement such as people from the nobility entered into all of the time. For mutual gain.

He’d hardly been thrilled at the idea of marrying her to obtain what was rightfully his, now had he? He’d looked positively horrified when he realised what the will intended. As if he faced a fate worse than death.

She gripped her hands in her lap to stop them from shaking. Oh, great heavens, please let this all be a bad dream. Please let her wake up and discover it was a nightmare.

But she was awake. And it was horribly real.

What would Sally advise? Don’t trust a man like him an inch. Mary could imagine the hard look in her friend’s eye and the knowing edge to her voice. She’d been right about Allerdyce. And look at how easily her father had abandoned her after her mother’s death. But she couldn’t ask Sally for her opinion. She had to rely on her own judgement. And, so far, nothing the earl had said or done made her want to trust him.

Gradually she became calmer, her breathing less shallow, the trembles less pronounced. One thing she knew, she wasn’t going to force any man to the altar. Especially not a man like the new earl.

Her heart gave an odd little kick. The sort of pang that someone less practical might describe as disappointment. Not her, though. Let other women have their romantic notions. There was no room for them in her life.

There had to be some way out of this dilemma. And no doubt the earl would find it. Once more the uneasy prickles of a ghost walking across her skin rippled across her shoulders.

The earl did not come down for dinner, nor did any of the other members of the family. Mary dined in splendid solitude in the dining room and felt like an idiot. Three footman and a butler wasting their time serving her. If they had told her, she could have taken a tray in her room. She finished as quickly as she could and waved off an offer of tea in the drawing room.

‘Do you know where the earl is, Manners?’

‘In his study, miss.’

‘And where is that?’

‘In the south wing, miss.’ He bowed and withdrew, leaving her none the wiser, but determined to seek him out and try to come to some agreement with him about the future.

Outside the dining room, she turned right, because left was the direction towards the north tower and her room. It stood to reason the south wing must be in the opposite direction, if the corridors were straight. But they weren’t.

After a half an hour of criss-crossing various parts of the house, and once arriving back at the dining room, she was ready to give up.

There was one hallway she hadn’t explored yet, because it looked narrow and darker than most of the others. She took a deep breath and gave it a try. It had only one door.

A door that was ajar and throwing a wedge of light into the corridor. She peeped through the crack. Aha. She had found the study and the earl. It was a small room, filled with ledgers on shelves rising to the ceiling behind a battered desk covered in papers. The earl was standing with one foot on the brazier in the hearth and his elbow on the mantel, staring into the flames of a merrily burning log fire. His dog lay prone at his feet.

He wasn’t an elegant man, his physique was too muscular, his shoulders too broad, his features too large and square, but there was nothing about him to displease the female eye, especially not now when his expression was pensive rather than hard and uncompromising. He looked not much older than she was. Early thirties, perhaps. And not really so very overpowering from this distance.

Her heartbeat picked up speed and her mouth dried. All right, he was really intimidating. Afraid that if she dallied longer she would flee, she tapped sharply on the door.

Both he and the dog looked up. Thankfully, the dog’s head dropped back to its paws and its eyes slid closed.

But his lordship was a whole different matter. His whole attention focused on her. She could feel it like a touch on her face. For a moment, a very brief moment, warmth flickered in his eyes as if he was pleased to see her.

His gaze shuttered. His jaw hardened.

Perhaps not, then. Perhaps he had been expecting someone else, for a moment later his lips formed a flat line and his eyes were icy cold. Almost as if he was angry. And yet she did not feel as if his anger was directed at her. It seemed to be turned inwards.

He left the hearth and strode to the middle of the room. ‘Miss Wilding,’ he said with a stiff bow.

She quelled the urge to run and dipped a curtsy. ‘Lord Beresford.’

‘Have you once more lost your way? Did you need an escort back to your chamber? Allow me to ring the bell for Manners.’

The irony in his tone was not lost on her even as his deep voice made her heart jolt, before continuing its rapid knocking against her ribs. Never in her life had she been so nervous around a man. Not that she met very many men in her line of work. Fathers, mostly. In a hurry to depart. Or men pursuing her girls and needing to be kept at bay.

She decided to ignore his jibe and boldly stepped into the room. ‘May I have a word with you, please, your lordship?’

He frowned darkly, but gestured for her to sit in the comfortably stuffed chair in front of the desk. He went around and sat on the other side, clearing a space before him, stacking papers and account books to one side. His face was almost entirely in shadow, while she sat in the full light of the lamp. ‘How may I be of service?’ he asked, politely enough to almost settle her nerves.

‘We must discuss this will.’

She sensed him stiffen, though his hands, linked together on the ink-stained wood, remained completely relaxed. He had strong hands with blunt-tipped fingers. Practical hands, bronzed by wind and weather and scarred across the knuckles. Labourer’s hands rather than those of a gentleman.

After a small pause, he sighed, a small exhale of air, as if he had been holding his breath. As if she had caught him by surprise. ‘I suppose now is as good a time as any.’ His voice was expressionless.

‘Was the lawyer able to provide any advice on how the terms might be broken?’

‘No. You are perfectly safe on that score.’

He thought her a fortune hunter. The desire to bash him over the head with something rose up in her breast.

But how could he not, given the terms of the will?

The chill in the air was palpable. The suspicion. ‘Perhaps you would like to explain why the earl … my grandfather,’ he choked out the last word, ‘would leave the bulk of his fortune to you?’

‘He is the benefactor of the school where I grew up and now work. He supported me there when I was orphaned. That is all I know.’

The earl made a soft sound of derision.

She bridled. ‘It is true. I swear it.’

His hands flattened on the table. ‘Then he was not your lover?’

She gasped. ‘You are jesting.’

The silence said he was not.

‘How dare you suggest such a thing?’ She shot to her feet.

He followed. ‘Sit,’ he said coldly. ‘You wanted to talk. Let us have this out.’

‘Not if you are going to insult me.’

‘Sit of your own volition or by my will.’ His voice was soft but the menace was unmistakable.

She did not doubt for a moment that the brute could overpower her. ‘Touch me and I will scream.’

His face darkened. ‘And who will come to your aid, do you think?’ he asked softly.

No one. She swallowed.

He let go a displeased sigh. ‘Please, Miss Wilding. Take your seat. You are right, we have things we need to discuss.’

For a moment she hesitated, but it was foolish to dash off having worked up the courage to face him. She sat and folded her hands in her lap. ‘Very well, but do not cast aspersions on my character.’

His gaze didn’t waver from her face. ‘Look at this from my perspective. I am trying to understand why my grandfather left you his fortune. Lover is an obvious answer.’

Her hackles rose again. She hung on to her anger. ‘Isn’t it more likely I did him some favour? Perhaps rescued him from danger.’

He snorted. ‘What sort of danger?’

‘He could have ridden past Ladbrook’s School where I teach one day and been set upon by footpads. Seeing him from the classroom window, I might have charged out to save him with my pupils at my heels. As you know, there is nothing more daunting to the male species than the high-pitched squeals of a gaggle of females, particularly when armed with parasols.’

Oh dear, now where had all that ridiculousness come from? Her stomach tightened. Rarely did she let her tongue run away with her these days. It seemed she needed to get a firmer grip on her anger.

He picked up a quill and twirled it in those strong fingers. Fascinated, she watched the only sign she’d ever seen that he was not completely in control. ‘But it didn’t happen that way,’ he said drily.

‘No. But you must admit it is just as plausible as your scenario. He was a very old man.’

‘You think to toy with me, Miss Wilding? I can assure you that is a very dangerous game and not one you are equipped to play.’

‘I have no idea why he left his money to me in this fashion.’

‘Let us hope you do not. If I discover that you are a willing instrument in this plot of his, things will not go well for you.’

The air left her lungs in a rush at the obvious threat. ‘I can assure you …’

‘You need assure me of nothing. There will be no marriage.’

‘You must have done something to deserve so terrible a fate?’

He didn’t seem to notice the irony in her tone. ‘I drew breath when I was born.’ The quill snapped.

She jumped at the sound.

He tossed the two pieces aside.

A shiver ran down her back. She fought her instinct for sympathy. ‘A little melodramatic, isn’t it?’

‘Much like your tale of rescue.’

She frowned. It was time to play the one and only card in her hand and hope it was a trump. ‘Why don’t I just sign over the money to you? I need only a very little for myself.’

‘The perfect solution.’

She let go a sigh of relief. She really had not expected him to see reason so quickly. ‘Then I will leave in the morning, once the papers are signed.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘It can’t be done. The money only comes to you if you marry. I will put the best legal minds to work on finding a solution, and in the meantime you will remain here.’

‘I can’t stay. I am expected back at the school.’

‘Then tell me what connection you are to the earl.’ His fingers drummed an impatient tattoo. ‘His by-blow, perhaps?’ he said flatly.

‘I beg your pardon?’ She stared into the shadows, trying to see his expression, trying to see if he was jesting, while her mind skittered this way and that. ‘You think me the late earl’s daughter?’

‘You look like a Beresford.’

He thought they were family? Her chest squeezed. Her heart struggled to beat. The air in the room seemed suddenly thick, too dense to breathe. That had been her first thought, also. Her wild hope, but not in the way he was suggesting. Good Lord, did he think the earl was requiring his grandson to marry his aunt? Technically incest, even if he carried not a drop of Beresford blood. ‘That is disgusting.’

‘Exactly.’

She leaped to her feet and made for the door. ‘I will leave first thing in the morning.’

Before she could reach the door, he was there, one hand holding it shut while he gazed down into her face. For a big man, he moved very quickly. And surprisingly quietly.

Judging by the tightness of his mouth and the flash of steel in his eyes, he was not pleased. ‘You, Miss Wilding, are not going anywhere until I say you may.’

She shrank back against the door. ‘You have no authority over me.’

‘Apparently, I do.’

She gasped. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘According to the solicitor, you are my ward.’

Chapter Three

‘Utter nonsense.’

‘Savary informed me that he told you that you need my permission to wed.’

‘That does not make you my guardian.’

‘No, but since I have taken over the responsibilities of the earldom, that makes me your guardian.’

‘The late earl was not my guardian. I have no need of a guardian, I have lived by my own efforts for years.’

‘You have lived off this estate.’ He pointed to a ledger on the desk. ‘Each quarter a sum of money was paid to a Mrs Sally Ladbrook for your keep and education. A very princely sum, I might add.’ His gaze dropped to her chest, which she realised was expanding and contracting at a very rapid rate to accommodate her breathing.

His eyes came back to her face and his jaw hardened. ‘And then you show up here in rags hoping for more.’

Damn him and his horrid accusations. Her hand flashed out. He caught her wrist. His fingers were like an iron band around her flesh. ‘You’ll need to be quicker to catch me off guard.’

‘What kind of person do you think I am?’

His expression darkened. ‘A Beresford.’ He cast her hand aside.

Never had she heard such hatred directed at a single word. It must have tasted like acid on his tongue.

‘You are a Beresford.’

His eyes widened. ‘I doubt there are many who would agree. Certainly not me.’

‘Then you should not be inheriting the title.’

‘You are changing the subject again, Miss Wilding.’

The subject was as slippery as a bucket of eels. ‘I have had quite enough of your accusations.’

‘Are you saying you didn’t come here seeking money?’

She coloured. ‘No. Well, yes, for the school. It needs a new roof.’ Among many other things it needed. ‘But I have never met the earl before last night. And there certainly have been no vast sums of money coming to Ladbrook’s or to me.’

He glanced across the room at his desk, at the account book, clearly not believing a word.

A rush of tears burned behind her eyes, because she knew it could not be true, unless … No, she would not believe it. ‘I need to go back to the school. I need to speak to Mrs Ladbrook.’

He stared into her face, his gaze so intense, she wanted to look away. But she couldn’t. Didn’t dare, in case he thought she was lying.

Why did it matter what he thought?

Yet she would not stand down. Once more there was heat in that grey gaze, like molten silver, and the warmth seemed to set off a spark in her belly that flashed up to her face. Her cheeks were scalding, her heart pounding against the wall of her chest as if she had run a great race.

Slowly his hand moved from the door to her shoulder, stroked down her arm, his fingers inexorably sliding over muscle and bone as if he would learn the contours of her arm.

His expression was grim, as if this was not something he wanted to do at all, yet he did not stop.

She tipped her face upwards, her lips parted to protest … Only to accept the soft brush of his warm dry velvety lips. Little thrills raced through her stomach. Chased across her skin.

And then his mouth melded to hers, his tongue stroking the seam of her mouth, the sweet sensation melting her bones until she parted her lips on a gasp of sheer bliss and tasted his tongue with her own. Feverishly, their mouths tasted each other while she clung to those wide shoulders for support and his hands at her waist held her tight against his hard body.

She could feel the thunder of his heart where his chest pressed against her breasts, hear the rush of her blood in her veins. It was shocking. And utterly mesmerising.

On an oath, he stepped back, breaking all contact, shock blazing in his eyes.

The thrills faded to little more than echoes of the sensations they had been a moment ago. What on earth was she doing? More to the point, what was he doing? ‘How dare you, sir?’ she said, pulling her shawl tightly around her.

At that he gave a short laugh. ‘How dare I what?’

‘Kiss me.’

‘You kissed me.’

Had she? She didn’t think she had, but she wasn’t exactly sure what had happened. Unless … ‘Don’t think to force me into marrying you by ruining my reputation. You see, that kind of thing doesn’t matter to me.’

His eyes widened. ‘So that is your plan, is it?’

‘Oh, you really are impossible.’

For a long moment his gaze studied her face, searching for who knew what. ‘I will discover what it is my grandfather put you up to, you know. I will stop you any way I can. I have more resources at my disposal than you can possibly imagine.’

She could imagine all right. She could imagine all sorts of things when it came to this man. Resources weren’t the only thing chasing through her mind. And those thoughts were the worst of all: the thoughts of his kisses and the heat of his body. ‘The best thing you could do is kill me off. Then all your troubles will be over.’

The grey of his eyes turned wintry. His expression hardened. ‘Don’t think I haven’t thought of it.’

Her breath left her in a rush. Her stomach dropped away and she felt cold all over. She ducked under his arm, pulled at the door handle and was out the door in a flash and running down the corridor.

‘Miss Wilding, wait,’ he called after her.

She didn’t dare stop. Her heart was beating far too fast, the blood roaring in her head, for her to think clearly. But now he had shown his hand, she would be on her guard.

After a night filled with dreams Mary couldn’t quite recall—though she suspected from how hot she felt that they had something to do with the earl and his kiss—she awoke to find Betsy setting a tray of hot chocolate and freshly baked rolls beside the bed.

‘What time is it?’

‘Nine o’clock, miss.’

So late? How could she have slept so long and still feel desperately tired? Perhaps because she’d been in such a turmoil when she went to bed. Perhaps because she could not get those dark words out of her mind. Don’t think I haven’t thought of it.

‘The weather is set to be fair, miss.’ Betsy knelt to rake the coals in the fire. ‘Warm for this time of year.’

Mary hopped out of bed and went to the window. ‘So it is. I think I will go for a walk.’ She dressed with her usual efficiency in her best gown.

Betsy rose to her feet. ‘The ruins are very popular with visitors in the summer,’ she said, watching Mary reach behind her to button her gown with a frown of disapproval. ‘Very old they are. Some say the are haunted by the old friars who were killed by King Henry.’

Mary tucked a plain linen scarf in the neck of her bodice and picked up her brush. ‘Superstitious nonsense.’ She brushed hard. ‘Have you ever seen a ghost?’ She glanced past her own reflection at the maid, who looked a little pale.

‘No, miss.’ She gave a little shiver. ‘And I’ve worked here for three years. But I don’t go out there at night.’

Mary coiled her hair around her fingers and reached for her pins. ‘The ruins sound fascinating. I will be sure to take a look.’ She wished she had used her time in the library the previous day looking at a map of the area instead of reading romantic poetry.

‘Would miss like me to fix her hair?’ Betsy asked, looking a little askance at the plain knot Mary favoured. ‘I can do it up fancy like Mrs Hampton’s maid does, if you like. I have been practising on the other girls.’

Mary heard a note of longing in the girl’s voice. ‘Why, Betsy, do you have ambitions to become a lady’s maid?’

Betsy coloured, but her eyes shone. ‘Yes, miss. I would like that above all. My brother works down Beresford’s tin mine. If I had a better paying job, he could go to school.’

Her mine. Or it would be if she married. ‘Is it a bad place to work?’

Betsy looked embarrassed. ‘It’s hard work, but the manager, Mr Trelawny, is a fair man. Not like some.’

‘How old is your brother?’

‘Ten, miss. Works alongside my Da, he does. Proud as a peacock.’

The thought of such a small boy working in the mine did not sit well in her stomach. But she knew families needed the income. As the mine owner, if she really was a mine owner, she could make some changes. To do that, she had to marry. And then the mine would belong to her husband and not to her. It was all such a muddle. Being a schoolteacher was one thing, but this … this was quite another. Besides, it was easy to see that if she married the earl, he would rule the roost. He was not the type of man to listen to a woman.

What she needed was some sensible counsel to see her through this mess. While Sally Ladbrook might not be the warmest of people, she had a sensible head on her shoulders. ‘Perhaps you can help me with my hair another day. That will be all for now.’

How strange it sounded, giving out orders to another person in such a manner, but Betsy seemed to take it as natural, bobbing her curtsy and leaving right away.

Oh dear, Mary hoped the girl wouldn’t be too disappointed that Mary could not offer her a position, but she really couldn’t stay. Not when Lord Beresford considered her death a plausible option.

Besides, she desperately needed to speak to Sally about the other matter the earl had raised. The money. There had to be a plausible explanation, other than misappropriation. The earl was wrong to suggest it.

She sat down and drank the chocolate and ate as many of the rolls as she could manage. The last two she wrapped in a napkin and tucked in her reticule to eat on the journey.

She counted out her small horde of coins and was relieved to discover she had enough to get her back to Wiltshire on a stagecoach. After packing her valise and bundling up in her winter cloak and bonnet, she headed for a side door she’d noticed in her wanderings. She just hoped she could find it again in the maze of passageways and stairs.

After a couple of wrong turns, she did indeed find it again. A quick survey assured her no one was around to see her departure. She twisted the black-iron ring attached to the latch and tugged. The heavy door, caught by the wind, yanked the handle out of her hands and slammed against the passage wall with a resounding bang.

Her heart raced in her chest. Had anyone heard? Would they come running? Rather than wait to see, she stepped outside and, after a moment’s struggle, closed the door behind her.

She really hadn’t expected the wind to be so fierce. She pulled up her hood and tightened the strings, staring around her at crumbling walls and stone arches overgrown with weeds. The jagged walls looked grim and ghostly against the leaden sky, though no doubt it would look charmingly antiquated on a sunny day.

Clutching her valise, she picked her way through the ruins, heading north, she hoped. A green sward opened up before her. Not the cliffs and the sea. In the distance, a rider on a magnificent black horse galloped across the park, a dog loping along behind.

The earl. It could be no one else. Hatless, his open greatcoat flapping in the wind, he looked like the apocalyptic horseman of Death. She shivered.

No, that was giving him far too much in the way of mystical power. He was simply a man who wanted his birthright. And she had somehow managed to get in the way. The thought didn’t make her feel any better.

Realising she must have turned south, she swiftly marched in the other direction, around the outside of the ruins, up hill this time, which made more sense if she was headed for cliffs.

The wind increased in strength, buffeting her ears, whipping the ribbons of her bonnet in her face and billowing her cloak around her. She gasped as it tore the very breath from her throat. It would be a vigorous walk to St Ives and no mistake.

She licked her lips and was surprised by the sharp tang of salt on her tongue. From the sea, she supposed. Interesting. She hadn’t thought of the salt being carried in the air. Head down, she forged on, looking for a path along the cliff top. The upward climb became steeper, so rocky underfoot she had to watch where she placed each step or risk a tumble. She paused to take stock of her progress.

A few feet in front of her the ground disappeared and all she could see ahead of her was grey surging waves crested with spume. It was lucky she had stopped when she did.

But where was the path mentioned by Gerald? She scanned the ground in both directions and was able to make out a very faint track meandering along the cliff top. It looked more like a track for sheep than for people.

The wind seemed intent of holding her back, but she battled into it, following the track frighteningly close to the edge.

The strings of her hood gave way against a battering gust and her bonnet blew off, bouncing against her back, pulling against her throat. Strands of hair tore free and whipped at her face, stinging her eyes. A roar like thunder rolled up from below.

She leaned out to peer through the spray into the boiling churning water. Hell’s kitchen must surely look and sound like this. As each wave drew back with a grumbling growl, she glimpsed the jagged rocks at the base of the cliff and off to her left a rocky cove with a small sandy beach.

Out in the distance, the sky and sea became one vast grey mist. The world had never felt this big in the little Wiltshire village of Sarum. She leaned into the wind and felt its pure natural strength holding her weight. She laughed. She couldn’t help it. She had never experienced such wildness.

Something nudged into her back.

She windmilled her arms to regain her balance. Her valise went flying over the cliff. And the ground fell from beneath her feet.

She screamed.

Chapter Four

An iron band of an arm closed around her waist at the same moment her feet left the ground. She hung suspended above the raging sea for what felt like hours, but could only be seconds. That arm twisted her around and plonked her down. Not on the ground, but on a pair of hard muscled thighs gripping a saddle.

Teeth chattering, heart racing, she gazed up into the earl’s hard face. With a click of his tongue he backed the horse away from the edge. Was he mad? They could all have gone over the cliff.

Clear of the edge, he halted the horse’s backward progress and wheeled around so they were no longer facing the sea. Further along the cliff, a shepherd, crook in hand, was running towards them. The earl waved, an everything-is-fine acknowledgement, which it wasn’t, and the shepherd stopped running and waved back.

‘Put me down,’ she demanded.

A grunt was all the answer he gave.

She felt his thighs move beneath her as he clicked his tongue. The horse headed down hill. Back the way she had come. The urge to protest caused her hands to clench.

‘Are you mad?’ she yelled over the wind. ‘I almost went over the edge.’

His cold gaze flicked over her face. He took a deep shuddering breath as if to control some strong emotion. Fear? More likely anger. His next words confirmed it. ‘It would have served you right, my girl. What the devil did you think you were doing?’

She shoved the annoying lengths of hair out of her face. Dash it, she would not lie. ‘Walking to St Ives. Now I have lost my bag.’

‘You are lucky that was all you lost,’ he murmured like a threat in her ear.

He meant she could have lost her life. She swallowed and glanced back towards the headland, where the shepherd, a hand shading his eyes, was still watching them. It would have been the answer to all the earl’s problems if she had gone over that cliff. She could have sworn something nudged her in the back. Had he changed his mind at the last moment?

A cold hand clawed at her stomach. She glanced at his grim expression. He’d been angry about that will. She could well imagine him taking matters into his own hands. But murder? A shiver slid down her back.

The further from the cliff they got, the less the sea and the wind roared in her ears. She lifted her chin and met his chilly gaze. ‘You have no right to keep me here.’

‘I have every right. I am your guardian.’

‘Only in your mind,’ she muttered.

He stiffened. ‘You need a keeper if you think it is safe to walk along that cliff top.’

Now he was pretending he minded if she fell. Why? So she wouldn’t guess his intentions? It certainly wasn’t because he cared about what happened to her. The cold in her stomach spread to her chest. She readied herself to jump down and run for her life.

He hissed in a breath, as if in some sort of pain. ‘In heaven’s name, stop wriggling.’

‘Then put me down.’

‘I’ll put you down when I am good and ready.’

The big horse pranced and kicked up his back legs. She instinctively grabbed for his lordship’s solid shoulders. He tensed and she heard him curse softly under his breath. He pulled the horse to a stop and, putting an arm around her waist, lowered her to the ground. He dismounted beside her.

‘No need to interrupt your ride,’ she said brightly. ‘I can find my own way.’

He grasped her upper arm in an iron grip. Not hard enough to hurt, but there was no mistaking she could not break free. ‘How did you get out of the house without anyone seeing you?’

She gasped. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I left orders that you were not to leave.’

‘Orders you have no right to give?’ ‘Don’t test my patience, Miss Wilding. I will have no hesitation in dealing with you as you deserve.’

She swallowed hard. ‘Killing me off, you mean?’ Oh, no. She couldn’t believe she had just blurted that out.

He released her as if she was hot to the touch. His eyes flashed with an emotion she could not read—pain, perhaps? More likely disgust given the hard set to his jaw. ‘I assure you, when I want your death, it will not occur in front of witnesses.’

So he had seen the shepherd and thought better of it. She tried not to shiver at the chill in his voice. ‘I will keep that in mind, my lord. Thank you for the forewarning.’

He stared at her, his lips twitching, his eyes gleaming as if he found something she had said amusing. ‘You are welcome, Miss Wilding. Come along, I will escort you back to the house.’

So now they were to pretend nothing had happened? That he hadn’t seriously thought about pushing her off a cliff? Perhaps she should pretend she was joking about thinking he wanted her dead. She quelled a shiver. She hated this feeling of fear. Anger at her weakness rose up in her throat, making it hard to breathe or think, when she should be finding a way to beat him at his own game. She gave him a look of disdain. ‘Did no one tell you it isn’t polite to creep up on a person?’

‘I was riding a very large stallion over rocky terrain. That hardly counts as creeping.’

‘I didn’t hear you over the noise of the sea. Surely you could tell?’

He gave her a look designed to strike terror into the heart of the most intrepid individual. ‘I had other things on my mind.’

Such as pushing her over the edge. She began striding down hill. Unlike most men of her acquaintance, he easily kept pace, the horse following docilely, while the dog bounded around them. Surprisingly, his steps matched hers perfectly. On the rare occasion when she’d walked alongside a gentleman—well, back from the village with the young man who delivered the mail—she’d had to shorten her stride considerably because the young man was a good head shorter than she. The earl, on the other hand, towered above her. A rather unnerving sensation.

All her sensations with regard to this man were unnerving. The fluttery ones when he kissed her, the shivery ones when she felt fear and the one she was feeling now, a strange kind of appreciation for his handsome face and athletic build when she should be absolutely terrified. It seemed that whereas her mind was as sharp as a needle, her body was behaving like a fool.

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